The present invention relates generally to a system and methods for previewing audiovisual information, and more particularly to a reconfigurable system and methods for previewing audiovisual information thereon related to a product of interest in a commercial environment.
Commercial television and radio have been recognized as a powerful and efficient medium for broadcasting advertising and entertainment content to a large audience. As a result, television and radio have traditionally garnered a major share of advertising budgets. However, due to a variety of factors, advertising revenues for these media outlets have been dropping over the past several years, a trend which is expected to continue. One major drawback of television and radio advertising is the failure of these media to do more than deliver a large number of impressions to a large and relatively undifferentiated audience. Advertising dollars are ineffectively spent on messages that reach the wrong audiences under the wrong circumstances. Further, national network television is not well suited for products or services which are only locally or regionally available. The total cost of multiple regional campaigns to address such issues on local television or radio stations, for example, will often equal or exceed that of a national program.
Point of purchase advertising represents an alternative to broadcasting product information to the general public. In point-of-purchase advertising, the customer identifies a particular product of interest and is subsequently provided with advertisement and other product information at the point of purchase. This system provides a more targeted approach to the delivery of advertisement and entertainment content since the customer is actively seeking the information related to an identified product.
The aforementioned concurrently filed patent applications provides an improved system which can collect and transmit advertisements, promotional information, content, and other information concerning the product of interest to the customer at the point of purchase. What is needed is a listening post which can present this information interactively to the customer upon the identification of the product of interest. Further needed is a listening post which can be reconfigured to provide a variety of functions useful to the listening post""s proprietor.
The present invention provides for a reconfigurable audiovisual previewing system which allows the perspective customer to selectively preview tracks of CDs, clips from motion pictures, computer games and programs and other product media stored in a multimedia server once the product of interest has been identified, for instance by scanning the product""s UPC code. Pre-recorded promotional information, demonstrations and advertisements of the product or related products may also be presented, either upon the product""s identification or at predetermined times without customer interaction.
In one embodiment, the reconfigurable audiovisual previewing system includes a user interface module, a media communications module, and a plurality of application programs. One of the plurality of application programs is selected and configures the interface module to identify the product of interest. The selected application program also configures the media communications module to transmit, in response to the product""s identification, a request for related product information stored in said multimedia server, and to receive and play the product information retrieved from said multimedia file server in response to said transmitted request.